which in one sense unites, and in another parts, her and her lover for
ever, is one of the most really passionate things that the French novel,
in its revival, had yet seen. Besides this, there is a sort of extrinsic
appeal in the book, giving that curious atmosphere referred to already,
and recalling the old prints of the earth yawning in patches and animals
rearing themselves from it at the Creation. The names and personages of
Hulot and Corentin were to be well known later to readers of the "fifty
volumes," and even the ruffianly patriot[161] Marche-a-Terre had his
future.

[Sidenote: _La Peau de Chagrin._]

The second[162] blast of the horn with which Balzac challenged admission
to the Inner Sanctuaries or strongholds of the novel, _La Peau de
Chagrin_, had that character of _difference_ which one notices not
seldom in the first worthy works of great men of letters--the absence of
the mould and the rut. _Les Chouans_ was a Waverley novel Gallicised and
Balzacified; _La Peau de Chagrin_ is a cross between the supernatural
romance and the novel of psychology. It is one of the greatest of
Balzac's books. The idea of the skin--a new "wishing" talisman, which
shrinks with every exercise of the power it gives, and so threatens
extinction at once of wishing and living--is of course not wholly novel,
though refreshed in detail. But then nothing is wholly novel, and if
anything could be it would probably be worthless. The endless changes of
the eternal substance make the law, the curse, and the blessing of life.
In the working out of his theme it may possibly be objected that Balzac
has not _interested_ the reader quite enough in his personages--that he
seems in a way to be thinking more of the play than of the actors or the
audience. His "orgie" is certainly not much of a success; few orgies in
print are, except when they are burlesqued. But, on the other hand, the
curiosity-shop is splendid. Yet it is not on the details of the book,
important as these have been allowed to be throughout Balzac, that
attention should be mainly concentrated. The point of it is the way in
which the necessary atmosphere of bad dream is kept up throughout, yet
with an appropriate contrast of comparatively ordinary life. A competent
critic who read _Les Chouans_, knowing nothing about its author or his
work, should have said, "Here is more than a promising craftsman";
reading _La Peau de Chagrin_ in the same conditions he should have said,
"Her